Brazilians prefer TV, but spend more time on the Internet

Television is the media outlet that most Brazilians prefer, but they spend more time every day on the Internet, according to a survey released Friday by the office of President Dilma Rousseff.

After television, which is the top choice of 76.4 percent of respondents, the media Brazilians prefer are the Internet, 13 percent; radio, 8 percent; and newspapers, 1.5 percent, according to the survey taken by the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics, or IBOPE.

To prepare the study, the pollster interviewed 18,312 people across Brazil's 27 states between October and November.

Brazilians with Internet access spend, on average, slightly more time every day on the Web - 3 hours and 39 minutes - than watching TV, 3 hours and 29 minutes.

Television, present in 97 percent of households, is the media outlet to which most Brazilians are connected, while the Internet is present in 47 percent of homes.

"Income and years of education are perceived to have a close relationship with Internet access," according to the study.

Among higher-income families, 78 percent have Internet at home, a proportion that drops to 16 percent among those with lower incomes. Some 84 percent of college graduates say they have Internet access, compared with 20 percent of those who never finished elementary school. EFE